We’ve just delivered a community engagement project – advising innovative residential property developer Apex Airspace on a housing scheme in the London Borough of Southwark.

Apex specialises in developing high-quality ‘airspace’ homes on top of existing buildings, addressing the problem of severely limited land supply in built-up cities. It believes there’s potential to create 180,000 such new homes in the capital.

The company hired us to support its plans – in partnership with Lambeth & Southwark Housing Association and the Mayor of London – to develop 30 affordable homes by extending two large 1950s blocks of flats in London’s Bermondsey area. The scheme is designed to address the acute shortage of affordable housing in central London, as well as to improve the existing buildings.

Apex proposes to build a double-storey rooftop extension using modular construction methods and crane it into place on top of the existing, occupied blocks, as well as to add a central section to join the two buildings and ‘bookend’ extensions to each side (see visual below).

We’ve advised Apex on a sensitive community engagement exercise to outline the scheme to the buildings’ existing residents, explain the construction process and provide opportunities to raise questions and concerns.

And we’ve worked closely with Apex’s in-house team to produce appropriate communication materials and undertake effective resident engagement, including socially-distanced meetings.

Apex Airspace Director, Andrew Powell, says:

“It’s always important for Apex to have residents at the forefront of our minds when we develop an airspace scheme. We need to give them information in a format they’ll understand, keep them informed and address their concerns . TK Associates provided clarity on the message and how we should deliver it, using such items as newsletters and face-to-face meetings to ensure the recipients felt involved and knew we were listening. They also helped prepare us for one-to-one meetings.

Without their insight and support, I don’t believe the resident engagement exercise would have been such a success.”

Apex intends to start construction this autumn and to complete the scheme by early 2022. You can see a video of it here:

See more on our community engagement services and our work in the property marketing field.